Thanks brian, I appreciate it. And for the record, you can always complain, that's one of my favorite parts of the game.

Honestly, with the players I graduated last season and my less than impressive recruiting the past couple cycles I fully expected this season to be a significant step back. But I was able to sign a senior transfer point guard to run the offense and we managed another typical run, so I'm pleased with that. I need to get a good recruiting class this offseason, hopefully the local recruits aren't awful again like they have been the past couple cycles.

Midwest Region
The highly anticipated pairing of #24 Whittier and top-seeded Millsaps lived up expectation. Michael English's conventional 3-point play with 13 seconds remaining gave Whittier the lead and the So. Cal. school survived a Millsaps shot with one second remaining to score a 74-73 victory. The top seed will be wondering what happened after seeing a 13-point lead with six minutes to play evaporate. Terry Moss had 21 points for Whittier. Charles Hsu dropped a double-double with 18 points and 14 boards. Whittier now gets #13 W. New England, which had its own Houdini act to perform on Monday night. WNE looked like it was fading in the second half against Lynchburg until it pulled a rabbit from its hat to close the game on a 29-9 surge. Five players in double digits for WNE.

#21 Texas Lutheran continued its march as an 11 seed with a 90-78 win over John Carroll. TL was bulldog tough, grabbing a slim lead early in the second half and just stubbornly held on despite the fact the margin rarely got above five points until late in the proceedings. Five players in double figures for Texas Lutheran. The get #7 Willamette in the Sweet 16 after the latter held on 59-57 against Wittenberg. Michael Powell, a 70+ percent FT shooter this season, missed the front end of a potentially game-tying 1 and 1 opportunity with one second remaining for Witt. Howard Arnold with 20 points, 7 assists and 4 steals for Willamette.

East Region
#4 Vassar remains as the top seed after surviving a scare from S. Vermont 62-59 last night. Vassar trailed by 10 with 8:12 remaining, but embarked on an 18-3 run to take the lead. S. Vermont had a half-court shot at the buzzer for the tie that missed the mark. Next up with be 13-seeded upstart Wentworth, which dispatched Webster by a 74-67 count. Neither team held a lead of more than five points in the second half until later. The turning point really seemed to come in the final two minutes as Webster went just 1-for-6 at the charity stripe to fail to keep pace.

#9 Ursinus rode a 7-for-14 spree from long range to a 75-67 victory over Elizabethtown. Now they get ready for brand new #1 Greensboro, which had a bit of a scare as it could never get its fastbreak offense going against St. Joseph's (ME), partly due to a 14-for-33 brickfest at the charity stripe. Still, Greensboro led throughout the second half, though rarely by more than six points in the 64-61 win.

South Region
It is perhaps time to apologize to opponents of #6 Johnson and Wales, as the team seemed to take offense to my comparison of classic teams of yesteryear at the school. JW rolled to its second lopsided win of the tourney, 95-76 over Denison. It was close at the half, but 60 percent shooting in the second half allowed JW to pull away, as did 23 forced turnovers by teh JW defense. Bryan Davis with 24 points in the win. Looking for the challenge tonight will be #11 Hardin-Simmons, which used an explosive first half to bury Colorado on the way to an 88-67 victory. Kevin Bell had 23 points as HS forced 27 turnovers.

The lower half of the region has #10 Trinity advancing 73-69 past Emory and Henry. Frank Stuart had 23 points as Trinity built an 11-point lead early in the second half, lost it and then re-asserted itself for an 8-point lead that it defended in the waning minutes. Next in line is defending national champion #8 Penn St. Altoona, who shut down the US Merchant Marines' offense in a 63-51 victory. Dirk Gentry with 20 points and 10 boards in the win. The 10 boards were half as many as the entire USMM team was able to haul in during the game.

West Region
#5 Susquehanna continues to roll along, forcing 24 turnovers in a comfortable 83-68 win over Dickinson. Nervous moment for Susquehanna as reserve center Henry Nelson appeared to injure a leg early in the second half and play was stopped. The injury evidently wasn't too severe though as he was back on the floor playing before the final horn sounded. They'll face #25 Emory, which outworked Rivier for a 65-57 win on Monday. Emory has scored 65 points in both its national tournament wins this postseason.

Unranked CSU Eastbay unleashed Lawrence Pina on an unsuspecting Wooster squad. The sophomore went off for 23 points and 14 boards playing the 3 spot as Eastbay won 81-68. Charles Dees had 26 in the losing effort for Wooster, which was outrebounded 44-29 in the contest. Now they get #2 Buena Vista, a 69-58 winner over Sewanee. It was the second time this season Sewanee had successfully held a Buena Vista team averaging 95+ points to a score in the 60s. Like the first time, BV proved more adept at the slow game to take the win. Tim Arriola had 23 points on 7-for-17 from behind the arc in the victory.

I was just reading the play by play and noticed windixies switchted to a 2-3 zone/press combo for about 1+ minutes at the end... that's interesting (we'll call it 'gutsy" since it worked).... check out his zone IQs and you'll see why it was bold.

And, I'll be forever kicking myself because I very delibertely decided to NOT go slow down when game planning last night when I was in the lead at the end. I usually adjust the cut off that I'll go slow down --- but last night I decided to play normal tempo thru out.... perhaps I would have held on had I gone slow down? I'll never know....

They have been doing it all season, Brian. I bet that he has "losing late" set to zone/press when losing by six or more in the last three minutes based upon the game logs of some of his close games. In your game they switched back out of it once they got within five.

I suspect that some time back they were running press/zone and they switched over to press exclusively but he neglected to switch his losing late settings.

The question is, should I site mail him and let him know? That is a potential elite 8 match-up for me.

Considering my highest rated guy would currently be No. 5 on Whittier's roster, any lead tonight will be a good lead.

And I'm not even going to speculate about the future, other than I've deleted the note I made to myself preseason to consider cutting either Covington, Cone or Napier at year's end in order to start re-balancing class distributions. I really wish I could run 1,000 sims of this season, because I'm really curious what the range on final win numbers for my team would be and also to see what the most common final record was. My gut says I've really enjoyed favorable treatment from the RNG gods (I was guessing 17-18 wins for this crew back in exhibition play). Win or lose from here, definitely one of the most fun seasons I've had in HD -- this group has secured its place among my most memorable (I still can't bring myself to say best) teams.

Wow. This year has been weird. I knew this squad would be better at the end of the season due to the work ethic/growth of my 2 PGs. I scheduled really tough early (since my conference is kinda weak), but the early losses lead me to believe we just wouldn't be good enough to go far. The turning point in my season was adding Gillis to the starting lineup (spot up shooter to support my strong post game) and bring Braud off the bench (slasher who can fill it up against other backups).

My juco transfer Griffeth came along great, which gave me a strong bench.

I didn't see this coming though. Vassar was dominant this season. Seems like we are playing with house money now.